Beauty and the Beast

Description

From a series of illustrations of Beauty and the Beast set in Rococo France.

I don’t know of a version of Beauty and the Beast in which the Beast doesn’t require Beauty to dine with him. Sometimes they will eat together, other times he will watch her dine. (Sometimes he has genteel table manners but when outdoors will stalk and devour prey like a regular beast.) But at the end of every dinner he will ask her a question – sometimes if she loves him, others if she will marry him, and sometimes even if she will got to bed with him.

I based my series on a version in which Beauty spends a lot of time alone in the Beast’s palace and discovers mysterious and magical rooms and objects and in one case, finds a giant room filled with exotic, talking birds.

The Beast doesn’t usually get much character development or even interaction with Beauty in the older versions, so he doesn’t give her the library as a present. Instead she spends a lot of time wandering lonely around the empty palace, discovering weird and magical stuff. The library contains every book she’s ever wanted to read, plus sometimes every book ever written and every book yet to be written.

Portfolio Details

Medium

Drawn in Photoshop using a tablet, using textures hand-painted by the artist

Date

Spring 2014

Dimensions

Meant to be printed as a 24″x9″ folio, so that each half is 12″x9″. The character study is meant to be a half a spread, at 12″x9″.